Meat: A Benign Extravagance is an exploration of the difficult environmental, ethical and health issues surrounding the human consumption of animal flesh. It lays out in detail the reasons why we must decrease the amount of meat we eat, both for the planet and for ourselves and explores how different forms of agriculture shape our landscape and culture. At the heart of this book, Simon Fairlie argues that society needs to reorientate itself back to the land and explains why an agriculture that can most readily achieve this is one that includes a measure of livestock farming. Simon is an authoritative author writing about one of the key food and farming issues of the moment.
Simon Fairlie worked for 20 years variously as an agricultural labourer, vine-worker, shepherd, fisherman, builder and stonemason before being ensnared by the computer in 1990. Simon was co-editor of The Ecologist magazine for four years, before joining a community farm in 1994 where he managed the cows, pigs and a working horse for 10 years. He now runs Chapter 7, an organisation that provides planning advice to smallholders and other low income people in the countryside. Simon is also editor of The Land magazine, and earns a living by selling scythes. He is the author of Low Impact Development: Planning and People in a Sustainable Countryside.